A helping hand: The impact of a central line insertion support team.

As part of a central line-associated bloodstream infections prevention initiative, our academic medical center formed a dedicated nursing team to assist with central line insertions and provide support with caring for difficult lines and dressings. During the program's first 3 years, the proportion of insertion-related central line-associated bloodstream infections occurring in areas within the team's scope declined overall by 47%.

Standing-up COVID-19 monoclonal antibody infusion centers: Infection prevention and control.

This paper describes the creation of outpatient monoclonal antibody (mAb) infusion centers for COVID-19 patients in a large academic medical center. It shows how the early and consistent partnership between infection prevention and the clinical and operational teams to establish and implement policies and procedures led to efficient and safe workflows.

Methodologic challenges and lessons learned through conducting a hospital-based Salmonella Javiana case-control study.

Objective: Determine the food(s) most likely contaminated by Salmonella Javiana associated with a salmonellosis outbreak involving 2 hospitals in North Carolina that were within 50 miles of each other in November 2021.

Methods: A 2:1 matched case-control study was conducted. Food histories were obtained from hospital food orders and potential confounder covariates were collected from patient medical records.

Creation and impact of containment units with high-risk zones during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Background: The rapid spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) required swift preparation to protect healthcare personnel (HCP) and patients, especially considering shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE). Due to the lack of a pre-existing biocontainment unit, we needed to develop a novel approach to placing patients in isolation cohorts while working with the pre-existing physical space.

Objectives: To prevent disease transmission to non-COVID-19 patients and HCP caring for COVID-19 patients, to optimize PPE usage, and to provide a comfortable and safe working environment.

Strategies utilized to prevent and control SARS-CoV-2 transmission in two congregate, psychiatric healthcare settings during the pandemic.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a substantial effect on the delivery of psychiatric health care. Inpatient psychiatric health care facilities have experienced outbreaks of COVID-19, making these areas particularly vulnerable.

Methods: Our facility used a multidisciplinary approach to implement enhanced infection prevention and control (IPC) interventions in our psychiatric health care areas.

Building a personal protective equipment monitor team as part of a comprehensive COVID-19 prevention strategy.

We instituted Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Monitors as part of our care of COVID-19 patients in high-risk zones. PPE Monitors aided health care personnel (HCP) in donning and doffing, which contributed to nearly zero transmission of COVID-19 to HCP, despite their care of over 1400 COVID-19 patients.

The holy grail of hand hygiene compliance: Just-in-time peer coaching that leads to behavior change.

We describe the delivery of real-time feedback on hand hygiene compliance between healthcare personnel over a 3-year time period via a crowdsourcing web-based application. Feedback delivery as a metric can be used to examine and improve a culture of safety within a healthcare setting.

Preventable Patient Harm: a Multidisciplinary, Bundled Approach to Reducing Clostridium difficile Infections While Using a Glutamate Dehydrogenase/Toxin Immunochromatographic Assay/Nucleic Acid Amplification Test Diagnostic Algorithm.

Health care facility-onset infections (HO-CDI) are an important national problem, causing increased morbidity and mortality. HO-CDI is an important metric for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service's (CMS) performance measures. Hospitals that fall into the worst-performing quartile in preventing hospital-acquired infections, including HO-CDI, may lose millions of dollars in reimbursement.

Assessment of Self-Contamination During Removal of Personal Protective Equipment for Ebola Patient Care.

OBJECTIVE Ebola virus disease (EVD) places healthcare personnel (HCP) at high risk for infection during patient care, and personal protective equipment (PPE) is critical. Protocols for EVD PPE doffing have not been validated for prevention of viral self-contamination. Using surrogate viruses (non-enveloped MS2 and enveloped Φ6), we assessed self-contamination of skin and clothes when trained HCP doffed EVD PPE using a standardized protocol.

Longitudinal trends in all healthcare-associated infections through comprehensive hospital-wide surveillance and infection control measures over the past 12 years: substantial burden of healthcare-associated infections outside of intensive care units and "other" types of infection.

Objective: Targeted surveillance has focused on device-associated infections and surgical site infections (SSIs) and is often limited to healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in high-risk areas. Longitudinal trends in all HAIs, including other types of HAIs, and HAIs outside of intensive care units (ICUs) remain unclear. We examined the incidences of all HAIs using comprehensive hospital-wide surveillance over a 12-year period (2001-2012).